To allow a user to easily understand data relating to a variety of objects, data is often displayed in a table organized into rows and columns. Columns in the table may have entries containing text data. Columns with entries containing text data may take up more horizontal space than is desirable. For example, each column typically includes a column heading describing the data in the column. Thus, the column heading typically contains text data. In many cases, the column heading is significantly longer than the data in the other column entries. This can cause several problems such as wasting space on the display or forcing a user to scroll horizontally to view data for some of the columns.
One context in which column entries containing text data require a great deal of horizontal space is in capacity management. Capacity management is of increasing interest for a network containing a plurality of systems. Capacity management refers to the monitoring of and upkeep of the network. The network may contain servers, computer systems for individual users of the network, mainframes, printers, or other systems. Depending on the size of the network, the network could be made up of only a few systems or thousands of systems. A network administrator is typically responsible for ensuring that individual portions of the network function and that the network as a whole functions.
In order to ensure that the network functions, the network administrator keeps track of monitors for each system. A monitor is an attribute of a particular system. For example, monitors include central processing unit (“CPU”) utilization, disk space available, disk work load, the number of bytes sent by the system, and the number of bytes received by the system.
Applications allow a user such as a system administrator to query the systems within the network and receive information relating to each system's monitors. Once the data relating to the monitors are received, a network administrator typically displays the data on a display for the network administrator's system. One way of displaying this data is in the form of a table. Typically, a column of the table includes entries for a monitor and a row of the table has data relating to monitors for one system within the network. Typically, each column has a column heading indicating the monitor displayed for that monitor. Thus, each column has an entry, the heading, containing text data. Similarly, each row may have a row heading indicating the system within the network from which the monitors are received.
The heading for each column describing the monitor is typically significantly longer than the data in another entry for the monitor. Because of the large number of monitors that may have been queried and the width of the column heading, a conventional table may extend beyond the display of the network administrator's system. In order to view entries for some of the monitors, the network administrator scrolls horizontally to bring data relating to additional monitors into view. Many users do not wish to perform horizontal scrolling or do not realize that horizontal scrolling is available. In addition, because of the difference in length between some column headings and the other entries in these columns, there is a great deal of wasted space on the display. Thus, it is difficult for a network administrator to work with the information displayed in the table.
In order to allow the user to avoid horizontal scrolling and to more efficiently display information, some conventional applications truncate the column width or allow a user to edit column headings or other entries containing text data. For example, in a table displaying monitors, the column heading “CPU Utilization” might be truncated to be “CPU Ut”. However, information important in identifying the monitor may be lost by truncating the column heading.
Another conventional method for shortening column headings is to allow the user to edit individual column headings or other entries containing text data. However, editing the column headings may be time consuming. For example, if there is a large number of monitors which the network administrator wants to view, the network administrator may need to edit the heading for each column. If there is a large number of other entries containing text data, the task of editing the column entries becomes even more time consuming. In addition, each time the network administrator generates a new table to receive an update on the monitors, the network administrator must edit these column headings. This consumes the network administrator's time.
If the number of column headings is very limited, a conventional application might store a shortened heading for each column to allow the table to occupy less horizontal space. However, storing shortened headings for each column may be problematic: where there are a large number of columns or where new columns may be provided. For example, a network administrator may wish to view data regarding a large number of monitors. In addition, the language in which the monitors are to be displayed may change. Moreover, the network administrator may want to view data for a new monitor not previously supplied. The network administrator may then write an application to provide information for a new monitor. Different applications could also be used to query the monitors for the systems in the network. These applications could place the monitors in a different order or provide data for different monitors. If the column contains other entries having text data, it become even more difficult to store shortened headings in advance. Consequently, it may be difficult to determine in advance the shortened headings which should be stored and to which column the shortened heading corresponds.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method for reducing the horizontal space required by a column heading. The present invention addresses such a need.